When you fail. When something goes wrong. When the conversation was difficult, or the client left, or got angry at you. When the applicant or team member didn’t work out. When you screwed up, when it broke, when you missed the deadline. When someone complains, or is upset, or doesn’t understand. There are two questions
Category Archives: Sketchnotes
08
May
May
Many problems we shoulder are heavy. Difficult conversations, hard truths, issues with clients, differences of opinion. The burden you have to carry – only you, and no one can carry it for you – is like a backpack. A load is like a boulder. Something you literally can not (and are not supposed to) carry alone.
01
May
May
I walked a literal marathon last Saturday. I wanted to go walking and exploring – i have a list on my phone of places I want to explore, which I haven’t been able to travel to for the past year. And now the travel ban has been lifted I’m heading out as often as I can.
17
Apr
Apr
I got distracted this week. I had brilliant new ideas about how to help our clients and a message I wanted to make sure we get across, and ended up spending most of a day working on a video and some content on this topic and all the new ideas when really…I would have done better to just keep going on the projects I’ve got before me.
03
Apr
Apr
At the beginning it’s “hard work, and saying yes to just about everything”. This is how you succeed.
You move to working less, and saying no to almost everything. Hard work you replace with creativity (the ability to see opportunity) plus risk (the willingness to go for it). And instead of saying yes to almost everything, you work on saying no to almost everything.
27
Mar
Mar
There is SO much more to question asking (and answering) than we realise. As the owner of a creative agency whose purpose involves understanding our clients better so we can help them create better marketing…asking questions is one of the most important skills we have.
How we ask questions and how we listen, can entirely change the answers we receive.
20
Feb
Feb
Last week we had a 3 day team retreat, and it was amazing and inspiring and difficult and challenging and we did things wrong and we did things right. As a team, we read the book Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar…
12
Feb
Feb
“I just trust my gut”, you think. You hire someone you feel right about, and reject to the ones you don’t. A new prospect says and does a few things which feel dodgy, but seems like a nice guy, so you take him on as a client anyway. Many weeks or months later something happens and you think, “I knew it. I KNEW IT.”
28
Nov
Nov
This week is the American holiday of Thanksgiving. As a dual British-American citizen, it’s still a holiday I celebrate here in Scotland, and it really is one of my favourite holidays of all. Because the premise is: things are (or have been) very hard, so you gather together with family, eat good food and lots of it, and you give thanks for it all. For the food, the family and friends and tribe, and all the good things you’ve received or experienced even through the hard times.
20
Nov
Nov
I’ve been having various levels of back pain for the past seven weeks. (Just in case you don’t read the full note: don’t worry. I’ve seen a doctor, several physios, and am doing the work, and it is getting better. It’s just slow. That’s sort of the point of the note.) When it first started,
